Montane gave his listeners a sad, rueful smile. “But today’s news has changed all that, and it must change us. I am now prepared to settle for just one starship, one ark which will preserve the seeds of a new branch of humanity. It must be built with all possible speed. There may not even be enough time in which to complete the ship, but we must try. It is our only hope of salvation and therefore we must make the utmost effort.
“Until this day we have been content to gather money in small amounts, but now we have to change our ways. We have to put aside our morals, to stifle the voice of our consciences. In short, we have to do everything in our power to bring in that money, even if it means descending to methods which—in other circumstances—we would find repugnant.
“I hate to use words which are associated with some of the darkest episodes in human history—but, in this unique case, the end justifies the means.”
There was a taut silence then Mace Winnick, a skeletal, shrunken-faced man who had done time in a correction clinic, cleared his throat. “Corey, are you talking about stealing?”
Montane shook his head. “No stealing. I rule it out, not on moral grounds, but because of the high probability of being caught.”
There was another silence while his audience stared at Montane with speculative eyes, trying to assess the stranger that their leader had become. Dee Smethurst, the head cook—plump, pink and matronly, looking exactly as a cook should—raised her hand.
“You almost…” There was a pained look on her face. “You almost sound as if you would condone prostitution.”
Montane carefully avoided looking anywhere near the women in the group—Danea Farthing, Christine McGivern and Audrey Lightfoot among them—who were physically equipped to earn good money by hustling. “I will condone prostitution, male or female, if it builds us that ship.”
“Corey Montane!” Dee shot an outraged glance at those seated next to her and tightened her lips in a way which indicated that she would have a lot more to say at a later time.
It came to Montane that he was likely to lose some of his team as a result of the new rules of conduct, but that simply had to be accepted. His mission had been run too much on the lines of a mobile retreat for society’s gentle drop-outs. The time had come to stop playing games, and anybody who was not prepared to commit every personal resource to the cause would have to be treated as dead wood.
“I should qualify my last remark,” he added. “I am quite prepared to condone ordinary casual prostitution, but bringing in fifty or a hundred orbs a day—I am not conversant with the going rates—would only be a tiny step in the right direction. I would, however, applaud strategic prostitution, in which the client was induced to join or support our movement to the extent of selling up his or her possessions and donating the proceeds to our fund.
“It gives me no pleasure to speak to you in these terms—but our immortal souls are at stake. Nothing less than the future of the human race is at stake!”
Montane invited his listeners to join with him in open discussion, and he stayed with them for more than an hour while the tides of emotional debate raged back and forth. Finally, when he had become too tired to continue, he took his leave of them and walked back to his camper in the darkness. When he was inside the roomy vehicle he switched on no lights except for the small reading lamp at his desk. The warm glow from its toffee-coloured glass shade enabled him to prepare the pot of tea which he always drank before going to bed. His mind was racing, trying to assimilate all that had happened during the momentous day, but a sense of deep weariness told him he would have no trouble getting to sleep.
When he had finished the tea he undressed and brushed his teeth. He switched off the reading lamp and, on the way to bed, paused by the silver coffin which occupied the centre of the vehicle’s living space.
Placing both hands on the cool metal, he closed his eyes and in a low voice said, “I’m sorry about the way things are working out, Milly—but some day we’ll both be at peace.”
Chapter 6
Nicklin stood behind the counter of his repair shop and gazed around him with a kind of sad astonishment. The morning was just like that of the previous day—sunny, clear, warm and invigorating. There had been a succession of such mornings recently, and he had luxuriated in every one of them, but today there was something dismally wrong. Not with the familiar surroundings and appurtenances of his life, but with his reaction to them.
Was it simply that he had had a poor night’s sleep? He had lain awake for long periods, reliving his meeting with the Lady in Black, inventing different outcomes for the too-brief encounter. At times he had congratulated himself, with forced sincerity, on having escaped any entanglement with her; but for the most part he had become lost in vivid scenarios which ended with the two of them in bed together. During those episodes he had found himself with a raging, rock-hard erection which kept grinding itself into the mattress, seemingly of its own volition, while he cursed the criminal waste of his youth represented by his spending all the long nights alone.
He had had restless nights in the past, but had always welcomed the morning and the return of the bright, trustworthy realities of existence. On this morning, however, life was flat and boring. Not ordinarily flat and boring, but unbearably so. The things which used to interest him, no longer interested him. The cheerful environs of his repair shop and library now had all the appeal of a morgue, and the mere idea of having to retune even one more magnetic pulse motor was almost enough to make him sit down and weep.
What am I going to do, O Gaseous Vertebrate? he thought. I can’t see how I’m going to get through a single day like this—let alone the next sixty years…
With an effort of will, he picked up the order book and checked on what work was pending. The first two items, logged in Maxy Millom’s scrupulously legible writing, were a circular saw and a lawn-mower. Beside each was the legend ‘MT’, which meant that according to Maxy’s initial diagnosis their motors needed to be retuned. It was work which Maxy could not even begin to learn because he had an almost superstitious fear of the way a faulty motor could release bursts of gyromagnetic energy, causing tools to leap off the bench like startled animals.
Nicklin had always regarded adjusting the semi-sentient para-mag blocks of a motor, persuading them to deliver their energy pulses at precisely the right instant, as the most boring job ever invented—and that was when he was in a good mood. Today the prospect seemed dire. Wishing that the diffuseness of Orbitsville’s population and the lack of universal engineering standards had not made repair-by-replacement unfeasible, he slammed the order book down.
At that moment the bleached-out stillness of the world beyond the window was disturbed by a moving flurry of dust near the bridge. It was Maxy Millom, late as usual, arriving for work on his old Bronco scooter. As he neared the shop, Maxy stood up on the machine’s footrests and gave Nicklin a military-style salute. Maintaining the pose like a rider in a parade, he passed the window, slowing down all the while, and—as he had done perhaps a dozen times in the past—went straight into the tip of a rock about the size of a football projecting from the sun-baked clay. The scooter bucked and fell sideways, bearing Maxy to the ground with it. He jumped up swearing, kicked the scooter a couple of times to punish it for having obeyed the law of gravity, and retrieved his bright green sun-hat. Leaving the Bronco where it lay, he came towards the shop, walking grotesquely as he tried with both hands to extricate the seat of his pants from the cleft of his slabby behind.